East Europeans Who Lived Under Communism Know All About Fake News

Vlad B. Jecan (@vbjecan)
holds a Ph.D. in Political Science. He teaches at the University of
Georgia at Athens, GA, and is an associate expert at Davastrat

The proposal of Senator Angus King
(I-ME) during the recent Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on
Google, Facebook, and Twitter bears some weight. Mr. King suggested that Eastern Europe has developed a natural barrier
to block propaganda and that Americans should learn from their experience. Indeed, what “fake news” is for the U.S. is
“old news” in Eastern Europe. While obviously not immune, in the
past century the former communist countries found ways to read (and
write) between the lines.

For, you see, simple patterns of
distorted or conveniently appropriated truths reveal themselves
easily. Patterns that the world found in dystopian novels or in the
examples of communist narratives of enforced utopianism aptly
explained by Aleksandr Sozhenitsyn and others. These patterns were
daily experiences, often tragic, for local intellectuals.

For example, some years ago I read a
great work on Romanian military history, specifically about the
campaigns of Stefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great), voivode of Moldavia
from 1457 to 1504. Published
in 1959 by the official press of the Armed Forces of the People’s
Republic of Romania, the reading required a bit of intellectual
caution and occasional exaggerated hermeneutics.

The opening pages were reserved for the
usual ideological parlance: the victory of the proletariat, the
courage of peasant troops against invading armies, and that sort of
thing. The proletariat was the bulk, the center, the nerve system,
and the center of gravity of the defense force. Nothing of this
applies to the fifteenth century.

The book, which I am obliged to recall
from memory since I have not been able to find a digital or physical
copy here in Atlanta, did its best to evaluate the data that was
ideologically irrelevant to the communist censors: military
organization, equipment, troop deployment, and so on. Occasionally,
however, it became political by dropping arguments in line with
current ideological expectations that were carefully crafted to
glorify the Romanian peasantry in the field of battle. Their heroism
may have been significant against the Ottoman invasion, but probably
unverifiable through contemporary historical accounts or battlefield
archaeology.

The enemy was the Ottoman army.
Stefan’s peasants, confronted, for example, the Ottoman
Janissaries: well-trained, well-equipped, elite military units.
Common sense tells us that it is highly unlikely that Stefan’s
poorly trained and equipped peasant force would prevail in such an
armed confrontation regardless of possible territorial advantages.
Then how did Stefan win?

Moldova, at the time, had a strong
agriculture, exported livestock, while the famous Moldavian horses
were sold at high prices throughout Europe. Given economic
prosperity, Stefan may have been able to afford the services of
experienced mercenaries while regional allies and local recruits
supplemented the troops. The book may have been ideological, but it
provided the raw economic facts needed to understand what was really
going on.

All my undergraduate colleagues and
professors understood the need to exercise intellectual caution when
studying research published before 1989. After the Revolution of the
same year, the need disappeared but the habit remained.

For, you see, ideology is not
difficult. Propaganda is always simple. It needs to be simple to be
effective. Information operations seek to create gaps in meaning of
cultural, social, and political values to destabilize society. It is
a slow process even with available digital communication tools.

Ideology finds its place in the gaps of
meaning. However, it is easily identifiable since it borrows from an
accepted and predetermined set of half-full concepts and often-empty
words. The digital humanities provide competent methods to map such
concepts while social media research can trace them on Twitter,
Facebook, YouTube, and so on.

Social media are nothing more than
services that deliver user-generated content. The problem of content,
then, needs to be addressed with more content. Thus, we can observe
the formation of typical patterns of propaganda that have to be
grounded, just as in the example above, in fact. The targeted
cultural and political values can be identified and opposing
narratives established. Contrary to expectations, it is a continuous
effort where effectiveness is more valuable than efficiency.

Cyberspace is a neutral global platform
that simply provides media to deliver content fast. Government
pressure on companies to hastily implement measures to restrict
content will have unforeseeable consequences. The recent attempts of
YouTube to clean up content resulted in the demonetization of
creative gaming channels, for example. In this way, the dread of
potential future interferences of foreign governments in domestic
politics may very well lead to global censorship of a space developed
to be free. Prudence is advised.